On the flipside there were a couple pro-gay rights stories making the rounds today. Carly Rae Jepsen has joined Train in backing out of the Boy Scouts Jamboree because of the group's discriminatory policies. And a DC Comics illustrator has decided not to do the artwork for homophobic sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card's Superman comic.

Uh oh, anti-gay haters have solved the problem of dwindling support! They're reaching out to the youths with this cool new thing called rap. That oughta get them! It's kinda like when an inner-city substitute gets through to their students by showing them that Shakespeare is just like Jay-Z. Also conservative freak Bill O'Reilly got one of his minions to harass Colorado's House Speaker and implied that he supports child molesters (because, you know, he's gay).

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VIDEO OF THE DAY

Attention San Francisco area residents! Starting tonight, and lasting for two years, the Bay Bridge will be one giant light show.

"It took a lot of thought to come to this conclusion, but I've decided to step back as the artist on this story," Sprouse said in a statement released Tuesday. "The media surrounding this story reached the point where it took away from the actual work, and that's something I wasn't comfortable with. My relationship with DC Comics remains as strong as ever and I look forward to my next project with them."

Due to the creative change, the Card story will not appear in the first collected issue out May 29. Instead, it will feature a story by writer Jeff Parker and artist Chris Samnee, as well as a tale by Jeff Lemire and one by writer Justin Jordan and artist Riley Rossmo.

DC is also looking for a replacement illustrator for Card's story.

DC Comics said it supported Sprouse's departure and is looking for a replacement.

Illinois LGBT advocate Dawn Clark Netsch dies: "Former Illinois Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch, a longtime state senator and the first woman to win the Democratic nomination for governor, has died. She was 86...Netsch was a professor emeritus at Northwestern University School of Law and was known for her support of the gay and lesbian community. She was married to the late architect Walter Netsch, who died in 2008."

Mumbai police officers assault, extort gay man: "The victim, a pharma firm employee from Vasai, was travelling home late on February 22. He boarded a Virar-bound local from Dadar station around 10.45pm and reached Vasai an hour later. He then went to a lavatory on platform 2 to relieve himself where two men accosted him. They taunted him over his homosexuality and thrashed him. Later they took the victim to an ATM outside the station and forced him to withdraw Rs 25,000 in cash. The victim did as he was told, withdrawing the amount in three transactions."

Tom Cruise was a Catholic before he was a Scientologist: "Tom Cruise was a blank slate when he took Hollywood by storm in 1981 — but his success came despite an abusive father, troubled teen years and all-consuming infatuation with the Catholic Church that ended when he was apparently asked to leave for stealing booze."

Transgender woman gang-raped in midtown NYC hotel:
"The attack occurred about 2:15 a.m. in a hotel on 57th Street, in the
Midtown North Precinct, according to the NYPD. The woman, 27, was in the
hotel room with one of the men, but she kicked him out after an
argument, cops said. The man returned moments later, carrying a gun, and
he brought two other men with him. The three men then sexually
assaulted the victim as one brandished the firearm and threatened to
shoot the woman if she did not stop screaming, police said."

California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano introduces transgender bathroom rights legislation: "Discriminating against transgender people already is illegal in California, but the bill's supporters say AB1266 is necessary to ensure that school districts do not deny students opportunities to participate in activities or to feel welcome on campus."

Andrew Harmon on the disturbing Lisa Miller abduction case: "This afternoon, [Ken] Miller is scheduled to be sentenced for his role in the parental kidnapping of a young girl who disappeared more than three years ago. Her name is Isabella Miller-Jenkins, known in court documents simply as "IMJ," and for most of her life, she's had the misfortune of being at the center of a custody fight that has played out on the national stage. Isabella is now 10 years old and believed to be hiding in Nicaragua with her biological mother, Lisa A. Miller, a woman who fled the United States penniless and arguably delusional, having renounced her former homosexual life and having blocked custody visits between Isabella and her other parent -- Miller's lesbian ex-partner of many years."

From the wail of a passing siren to
the hiss-and-clack of a radiator, every sound in Amy Herzog’s superb new play Belleville, which opened Off-Broadway
Sunday at New York Theatre Workshop, echoes with subtle menace. They underscore
a vague yet permeating sense that the young American couple occupying the
sparsely furnished Paris apartment on stage doesn’t quite belong there—at least not together.

Abby and Zack met in college and
married young. They skipped his graduation from med school and moved to Paris so
Zack could take a job at Doctors Without Borders. Abby traded in her hopes of
becoming an actor and became a yoga teacher instead. “I can have the trappings
of a person I hate and still be a person I like, right?,” she asks no one in
particular. When the play opens, it’s clear they’ve been in Belleville for some
months—reasonably settled, but not quite comfortable.

An issue with their
travel visas prevents them from returning home unless they don’t want to come back again—so,
they’re stuck. The isolation of living as foreigners abroad only tightens their
already desperate grip on each other. Within minutes of the play’s opening,
it’s clear that Abby and Zack’s emotional lives have twisted into a codependent
knot too tight for either of them to untie. And there’s a faint uneasiness in
the air suggesting they might soon have reason to try.

As Abby and Zack, Maria Dizzia (In the Next Room…) and Greg Keller (Wit) give the sort of rare and remarkable
performances that are at once exacting and seemingly effortless. Every moment on
stage reveals further proof of their fragile mindsets and increasingly
troubling relationship. Each time one of them retreats behind a closed door—to
the bathroom for a shower, or the bedroom for a phone call—the tension of their
momentary separation feels palpable, even somehow dangerous.

Phillip James Brannon and Pascale
Armand are excellent as Alioune and Amina, the couple’s French-Senegalese
landlord and his wife. In the opening scene, Alioune
and Zack (friends as well as neighbors) hang out and smoke weed, though Alioune has to broach the
uncomfortable subject of Zack being more than a little behind in the rent. It’s the first evidence of
secrets Zack keeps from his wife, but for whose protection?

This New York production brings
together the original cast from the play’s world premiere at Yale Repertory
Theatre last season. Under the expertly nimble direction of Anne Kauffman (Detroit), they’ve shaded in every
contour of their characters and work together like a well-oiled machine.

At ninety-five engrossing, intermissionless minutes, Herzog's play is tighter and more fully developed than her previous outing this season (The Great God Pan at Playwrights
Horizons). A gripping portrait of intimacy on the edge of collapse, Belleville unfolds
carefully and subtly—until it suddenly, frantically unravels.